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Krämerspiegel, Op 66

Introduction

With this recording a curious work takes the stage that has been waiting in the wings ever since Volume 2 of the series. In the notes to that volume, I recounted how Strauss became embroiled in an increasingly bitter dispute with his publishers Bote & Bock which ultimately led to the composition of, among other songs, the Drei Ophelia-Lieder from Opus 67. To recap briefly, having become increasingly outraged at the almost total lack of copyright enjoyed by composers at that time, and the correspondingly overweening power of publishers, Strauss founded in 1898 the Society of German Composers. As its name implies, its purpose was to protect and further composers’ rights, and especially to collect fees and royalties.

The publishers retaliated by creating a rival organization whose main purpose was to oppose the efforts of Strauss and his associates. One of their leading members was the house of Bote & Bock, the publishers of the Sinfonia Domestica, to whom Strauss had also assigned his Opus 56 songs, published in 1906. Unfortunately, in the contract for Opus 56, he had unwisely allowed a clause to be inserted giving Bote & Bock the rights to his next six songs whenever they might be composed.

Becoming increasingly at loggerheads with the firm, Strauss prevaricated for as long as he could. For a time he had the excuse that he was too busily engaged with composing operas to have space for song-writing—the following years saw the premieres of Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos and Die Frau ohne Schatten. But in 1918 he found himself threatened with a court case. By then he had in his desk drawer the six Brentano-Lieder, later published as Opus 68 (see Volume 5), but he had no intention of surrendering such a magnificent set to Bote & Bock.

Instead he turned to Alfred Kerr, a well-known Berlin literary critic, who in March 1918 produced for him a witty set of satirical verses lampooning music publishers, and mentioning many of Strauss’s principal enemies by name. By May Strauss had set all twelve poems to music and dispatched them to Bote & Bock, who not surprisingly refused them out of hand. Eventually forced to discharge his obligation, which he did with the Ophelia-Lieder and three songs from Goethe’s Bücher des Unmuts des Rendsch Nameh, Strauss remained attached to his practical joke, and it finally saw the light of day in 1921, in a private de luxe edition by the art publisher Paul Cassirer, with illustrations by Michael Fingesten.

It is easy to understand why the cycle is now rarely performed, given that the texts consist entirely of in-jokes, and that the lion’s share of the music is given to the pianist. But Strauss’s music is well worth savouring, not least for its humorous references to Strauss’s own works, such as Der Rosenkavalier and Ein Heldenleben, and especially for the beautiful prelude to the eighth song and its reprise as the final extended postlude. This has a history quite independent of the cycle, as Strauss revived its lyrical, Schumannesque theme nearly a quarter of a century later, in his opera Capriccio.

Recordings

Volume 6 in Hyperion’s Strauss Lieder series, curated and accompanied by pianist Roger Vignoles, features a wonderful young soprano in her Hyperion debut. Elizabeth Watts—winner of the Lieder prize at Cardiff Singer of the World in 2007—performs S ...» More

There was once a Goat, a Goat
That nibbled at a flowering pot plant, a Goat.
Music, O Flower of bright beauty,
See how the Goat greedily licks his lips!
Presumptuously he would like
To guzzle all the Flowers.
Sweet Flower, defend yourself!
Go to hell, you greedy guzzling Goat!
Go to hell, Goat!

The cycle opens appropriately enough with Strauss’s principal opponent Kommerzienrat Hugo Bock, whose name in German means ‘billy goat’. The flowers on which the goat munches are the art of music itself, and the fairytale opening (‘Once upon a time …’) is immediately invoked by the piano’s deceptively sweet melody, its satirical purpose hinted at only by a continuous pattern of extraneous grace notes. Only as the flowers are warned to beware does a hint of dissonance enter the piano part; otherwise the entire song, including its message to the goat (‘shove off’) is delivered with a disarming smile.

The first line and the poem itself were inevitably prompted by the name of the great publishing house Bote & Bock (‘Bote’ meaning ‘messenger’), while Strauss’s own name allows a neat conflation between the ‘Rosenkavalier’ and ‘Rosenstrauss’ (‘bouquet of roses’, once more symbolizing music, or the composer himself). The piano introduction combines a portentous version of the opening theme of the previous song with Baron Ochs’s little waltz-song ‘Mit mir, mit mir …’. Inevitably this melts into a lilting Viennese waltz combining Ochs-ish elements with Sophie’s theme from the Presentation of the Rose. Picking up tempo as the rose retaliates against its unwelcome visitor, the music then becomes slyly chromatic with its exhortation to the goat to retreat backwards—‘hinterwärts!’.

This song addresses the most important of all German publishing houses, Breitkopf und Härtel, whose proprietor was Geheimrat Dr Oskar von Hase—the ‘hare’ of the poem. (In another gift to the satirist, ‘Breitkopf’ means ‘flat head’). Breitkopf had published some of Strauss’s earliest compositions, thanks to the financial backing of his Uncle George, but had withdrawn their support once this was no longer available—a slight that obviously rankled with Strauss, but hardly warrants the vitriol of this particular attack, which led Breitkopf to ban for decades any printing of the text in programmes or record sleeves. Strauss however contrives to sugar the pill—or salve the wound—with a suitably ‘salbungsvolle Phrase’ that is deliberately at odds with the message it is meant to convey.

Dreimasken-Verlag was the name of another, but less well known, music publishing house. Kerr’s obvious verbal reference is to Die Nebensonnen, the penultimate song of Schubert’s Winterreise—‘Drei Sonnen sah ich am Himmel stehn’. Cast as a weird fugue on a distorted version of the cycle’s main theme, the comically horrific vision builds to a huge climax, only to reveal the evidently unthreatening figure of the managing director Herr Friedmann, whose dignity is mischievously punctuated by a lively polka.

This lively 6/8 scherzo is prompted by yet another animal reference. It warns against the marauding habits of foxes like the brothers Karl and Franz Reinecke, owners of another of the publishing firms ranged against Strauss. ‘Reinecke’ is German for Reynard the Fox (the ubiquity of animals among the publishers’ names is extraordinary) and the piano takes to the chase with cheerful abandon.

O be warned, dear artist,
Exercise caution at all costs!
He who rows in certain boats
Falls into water up to his neck.
And when dark dim light
Peeps suspiciously through the mist,
Don’t stroll on Flax Island,
Where spooky lanky Robert lurks!
Lanky Robert
Will steal your purse!

This song introduces two more publishers, C F Kahnt of Leipzig and Robert Lienau of Berlin; first by coining a verb from the German noun for a little boat, ‘Kahn’—‘Wer in gewissen Kähnen kahnt’ / ‘He who rows in certain boats’—and then by inventing a plausible island pleasure garden called Lienau—‘Lustwandle auf der Lienau nicht’. The piano part is a combination of mazurka and Ländler, good-naturedly sending up the two eminent gentlemen.

After the gentle humour of the previous song, Unser Feind ist, grosser Gott injects a degree of military vigour, reminding us that in 1918 Germany was still at war with England and, by extension Scotland. This allows for another neat pun, on the name of B Schott’s Söhne in Mainz and its proprietor Kommerzienrat Dr Ludwig Strecker. ‘Strecker’ means ‘stretcher’, so Schott becomes the enemy ‘who puts many to the rack’—having made this point the piano dissolves into another high-spirited coda.

This song’s lengthy prelude sees the first appearance of the lyrical, Schumannesque melody that Strauss would later recycle to great effect in his opera Capriccio. Here it serves two purposes. First, as a welcome respite from all the previous high jinks, and secondly, to introduce the idea of Strauss as the artist rising above the mundane concerns of the commercial world—itself represented by the more jagged and chromatic figure with which the voice enters. The verbal payoff of the singer’s last two lines naturally prompts a quote from Tod und Verklärung, after which the postlude dispatches the unwanted businessmen so the composer can return to higher things.

There was once a bloodsucker
That stopped, that stopped at nothing.
It stank and stank,
And sucked and sucked.
But musicians seized it
And squashed it.
And when the bloodsucker died and stank,
A hymn of praise rose to heaven.

This song dramatizes the victory of the ‘Musici’ over a blood-sucking insect (the publishers), in a reference to Strauss’s establishment of the Composers’ Guild. The grotesque piano part, with its scrunching semitones and bizarre left hand, is derived from two uses of the word ‘Wanze’—first meaning ‘bug’ or ‘bloodsucker’, but also, in musicians’ jargon of the time, the phrase ‘Wanzen und Flöhen’ (bugs and fleas), which meant ‘sharps and flats’, as found on a sheet of music. Given what precedes it, the final hymn of praise is surprisingly restrained.

Artists are creators,
Bloodsuckers are their bane.
Who tramples on a work of art
Like the Ox from Lerchenau?
Who’s the hunter that spreads the net?
Who stinks of filthy lucre?
Who picks quarrels?
And who carries germs?
The upright, the friendly,
The excellent, the noble
Publisher!

The comic side of Der Rosenkavalier resounds through this song, which makes the point that publishers are like so many Baron Ochses tramping about, disturbing the artist’s peace. Heavy left-hand octaves depict their blundering footsteps, while right-hand semiquavers exuberantly develop a little figure also associated with Faninal in the opera.

With the entry of the Hero, Kerr’s reference to Ein Heldenleben is obvious, and Strauss responds with liberal quotes from the tone poem (the piano’s spiky interjections clearly representing his adversaries) and also from Sinfonia Domestica (at the word ‘Helden’). More opaque to non-German listeners is the second page, with its reference to Götz von Berlichingen, the medieval hero of one of Goethe’s most famous plays. At a climactic moment of the drama Götz defies the troops of the Emperor, declaring ‘Er kann mich—’, an implied obscenity Goethe’s use of which has become so embedded in German consciousness that merely mentioning the word ‘Götz’ instantly brings it to mind. Meanwhile the fact that the phrase exactly fits the first two bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is a gift to musicians—hence Strauss’s employment of it here, sotto voce but unmistakable in its intent.

Having delivered his invective it is time for the composer to sign off. He does so appropriately enough in the person of his own practical joker, Till Eulenspiegel, whose horn motif can just be heard, elegantly transformed to fit the opening Ländler rhythm, before the piano launches into its final envoi. This is a lengthy reprise of the Capriccio theme, which now builds to an exalted climax before ending softly, the composer’s peace and quiet restored.